With a voice and delivery that showed why she is the most successful slammer in the history of National Poetry Slam competition, poet Patricia Smith read some of her work to students in King Theatre as this spring’s Bingham Visiting Writer. Known for writing from the point of view of her subjects, Patricia read a few pieces from Blood Dazzler, a powerful collection of poems where she personifies Hurricane Katrina as a woman and shows the death and destruction through the “eyes” of the storm.

“I consider myself a storyteller, and what goes hand in hand with that is witnessing,” said Ms. Smith. “And in order to witness, I have to look for an entry point into the story. And once I find that entry point, which may not be the one everyone expects, I start to shed myself. You can pretty much tell that my choice of syntax–that’s me. But I’m trying to become that person, that event, in that place as much as I can. And the stories I tend to approach are human stories.”

When Jon Chan (II) writes about science, he makes complex ideas interesting for readers, whether they routinely read science or not. This talent was recognized when Jon won third place in the Yale Scientific Magazine National Essay Competition 2014 for his piece “The Good and Bad of Bias and Prejudice in Science.” This year’s essay prompt was: How does bias affect the course of scientific research?

“Before I started writing the essay, I always thought the scientific method was foolproof,” says Jon, who is taking both Honors Biology and Advanced Chemistry this year. “I thought you publish your results, your peers review it and that the system worked. But as I did my research for the piece, I found out that scientists, just like everybody, have deeply held views. It’s hard to let go of something that you thought was true your whole life. Cultural bias also plays into it. For example scientific studies on acupuncture in Asia are usually positive where as in the West, the conclusions usually say it is an ineffective treatment.”

Dr. Sarah Das, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, spoke with students about her work studying large polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Dr. Das, this year’s Science Assembly speaker, says that as the earth gets warmer, the ice melt is causing a rise in sea levels and this melt has accelerated in the past couple of decades. One of the research questions she explores is: How will polar ice sheets respond to future climate change?

“The past can help us understand the future,” said Dr. Das, whose field work involves measuring physical and chemical characteristics of ice layers by digging snow pits and drilling ice cores. Science faculty member Matt Bingham spent two weeks last spring working with Dr. Das’s research team on the Disko Bay Ice Coring Project in Greenland. This past winter, students used techniques from that project to conduct research on ice formations right here on Milton’s campus.

Religious scholar Dr. Reza Aslan, who wrote the bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, spoke with students as this year’s Class of 1952 Endowed Speaker for Religious Understanding. Dr. Aslan travels the world speaking to people about religion, and particularly about understanding religious conflicts.

“A huge debate is going on in the United States about how responsible Islam is for acts of violence,” says Dr. Aslan. “As with most debates, it’s become very polarized and simplistic, the conversation does not have a lot of nuance. But if we are going to understand what is going on in the world and, more importantly, if we are going to address it and come up with a way to deal with the role of religion in violence around the world, we have to bring nuance to it, we have to have a better understanding of what religion is.”

Annabell Asare (II) was focused on a career as a politician. Her chance to meet President Barack Obama was an amazing opportunity, but it was also life-changing in ways Annabell didn’t expect.

“The event was so exciting,” says Annabell of the fundraising dinner held on Martha’s Vineyard last summer. “There was so much coordination of the president’s arrival and the security to get into the event. I always thought of politicians as sitting in their office doing their work, but that night I realized that the job is more like being a celebrity with the press coverage and the constant interaction, greeting and meeting people. Your life is not your own. I always thought I would be a politician, but I now know I want to work behind the scenes, maybe as a lawyer working on legislation or in public relations at the West Wing.”

If you get lemons, make lemonade; if you get snow, do snow science.

Last year, science faculty member Matt Bingham traveled to Greenland with a team of environmental scientists to be part of the Disko Bay Ice Coring Project. With the help of his students, Mr. Bingham created a blog to record his research on the influence of sea-surface variability on ice sheet mass balance and outlet glacier behavior.

This week, Mr. Bingham and his team of students used techniques from Greenland’s Ice Coring Project to conduct research on ice formations right here on Milton’s campus. The group dug two back-to-back snow pits, leaving a thin wall between the two holes. They then covered one snow pit with a sheet of plywood to block any natural light. Sunlight shining through the open snow pit filtered into the covered snow pit, allowing students in the covered pit to examine the layers in the packed snow that formed over the course of this winter. Milton’s researchers then measured the snow stratigraphy and sampled individual layers for density, snow water equivalent, and atmospheric chemistry.